Content uploaded by Adrienne Massanari
Author content
All content in this area was uploaded by Adrienne Massanari on Nov 20, 2015
Content may be subject to copyright.
ADRIENNE L. MASSANARI
PARTICIPATORY CULTURE,
COMMUNITY, AND PLAY
learning from reddit
PETER LANG
New York Bern Frankfurt Berlin
Brussels Vienna Oxford Warsaw
·1·
INTRODUCTION
If the internet is made of cats,1 reddit.com (reddit) is its temple. Like most red-
ditors, I cannot recall precisely how I first heard about the site—just as I cannot
imagine my online life without it. I am sure I started visiting it semi-regularly
in 2008/2009, mostly for the cat pictures. At the time, I was fascinated by
LOLcat humor (Shifman, 2014) and was looking for other spaces online where
people shared my fascination. I was pleased to find a group of witty, interesting,
like-minded individuals (and some jerks, of course). So basically, I came to
reddit because of cats. I stayed for the community.
This is a book about a particular online space—reddit—at a particular time
(2011–2014). But more than that, this is a book about how members of on-
line, participatory platforms experience these spaces, how their experiences are
shaped by the ways in which they are designed, and how these spaces embody
certain contradictions that remain underexplored by scholars and journalists.
This book is intended for anyone interested in issues around participatory
culture, gender, play, and identity and is meant for both new media scholars
and those with just an interest in how we live our lives online now.
This book has two goals. First, it is meant as a critique of much of the work
that has already been done concerning participatory culture.2 I believe that
both journalists and academics have often exaggerated the democratic poten-
tial and minimized the actual contradictions that it embodies. Popular press
2 participatory culture, community, and play
accounts of participatory culture tend to be overly laudatory, generic, and re-
ductive. And research into participatory culture platforms often references gen-
eral and high-level patterns but rarely offers specific details about the way these
spaces are experienced, contested, and co-created by both participants and site
designers. Additionally, investigations into online participatory culture often
do not unpack the ways in which these spaces are contested and negotiated
by members—and how “affiliation” (Jenkins, Purushotma, Weigel, Clinton, &
Robison, 2009) is neither clear-cut nor separate from the everyday lived expe-
riences of its participants. We tend to gloss over tensions that actually charac-
terize interactions in these communities, including the ways in which members
negotiate their own participation, and how the community collectively defines
its unique identity in opposition to/connection with other spaces (both online
and offline). And we tend to neglect how platform politics (Gillespie, 2010)
shapes particular spaces in particular ways—and underplays the importance
of how individuals and technologies are co-constitutive (Bijker, Hughes, &
Pinch, 2012; Latour, 1992, 2005). To that end, this book focuses on one par-
ticular online space, reddit, to engage with some of the larger issues related to
mediated, participatory culture in the early days of the 21st century.
Second, by documenting how reddit culture exists now, this book also
argues for the importance of preserving the nuances of interactions in these
spaces as they occur, as global culture is increasingly lived in and enacted
through them. However, the lack of meaningful archives makes reconstruction
of interactions after the fact nearly impossible, making it critical to document
what happens online as it actually happens. It is easy to dismiss “toaster
studies” (M. Gray, 2012) approaches to new media—that is, where scholars
and journalists examine every new platform or technology superficially—but
it is dangerous not to examine these platforms in depth for the richness of the
meanings their users make of them. Additionally, I would argue that we should
not presume (1) that investigations of the “ephemera” of new media are not
critical; or (2) that as scholars (and technology users), we possess the ability
to determine what will be “lasting.” Doing so risks losing important aspects
of our collective cultural heritage (and yes, even LOLcats are a part of that).
Why reddit?
Reddit (the self-proclaimed “front page of the internet”) enables the sharing
of original and reposted content from around the web. It was founded in June
2005 by Alexis Ohanian; his college friend Steve Huffman sold it to Condé
introduction 3
Nast publications in 2006, and in 2011 it became an independent subsidiary
of Condé Nast’s parent company, Advance Publications (Ohanian, 2013). In
2008, reddit’s code base went open source, becoming a platform that others
could use to create their own, entirely separate communities.
Reddit serves as an aggregation platform, which means that most content
on the site is linked to rather than directly hosted by reddit. As with other
social link/news-sharing sites, registered individuals can submit and upvote
or downvote content and comments. Voting is intended to show others what
material deserves more (or less) attention from the community. Individuals
who submit content and comments are rewarded with karma points, which is
a net total of the number of upvotes minus downvotes an item has received.
While participants often post content from traditional news organizations,
much of reddit’s activity revolves around the sharing of original/remixed con-
tent, such as memes (/r/AdviceAnimals, /r/fffffffuuuuuuuuuuuu, /r/lolcats),
pictures of animals (/r/aww, /r/babyelephantgifs), solicitations for advice or in-
formation (/r/AskReddit, /r/askscience, /r/explainlikeimfive, /r/IAmA, etc.),
or niche interests (/r/PenmanshipPorn, /r/hiphopheads, /r/bicycling, /r/Make-
upAddiction) in both public and private subreddits.3 Figure 1.1 shows what
the default front page (/r/all) might look like for a non-member.
Figure 1.1. Front page of reddit.com/r/all for a non-member (captured November 5, 2014).
4 participatory culture, community, and play
Reddit members (“redditors”) can customize their home page to see only
subreddits of interest. Thus, each individual’s experience of the site is a
bit different, depending on his or her subscriptions. However, a number of
subreddits serve as “defaults”—meaning that new accounts are automatically
subscribed to them.4 The intention of the defaults is to showcase to new users
a variety of the content that the site offers—the reality is somewhat different
(see Chapter 4).
Figure 1.2. Reddit front page for logged-in user (captured November 5, 2014).
While the links are interesting, most of what makes reddit an engaging place
are the discussions around submitted content. Clicking on the smaller com-
ment link instead of the main link takes you to the discussion page for that
particular image, video, article, or text posting. (See Figure 1.3.)
Here is where the best (or worst) of reddit is on display. Like links and text
postings, comments can be up- or downvoted by redditors, with those that
have the most upvotes typically appearing closer to the top of the page. The
reddit platform also allows for minor formatting in comment threads—includ-
ing links, tables, bulleted lists, and blockquotes.5
Reddit also features rudimentary profile pages where you can view links
and comments submitted by an individual account as well as see a running
introduction 5
total of that individual’s comment and link karma (useful tools for determin-
ing whether he/she is a troll). Profile pages also feature a “trophy case” with
badges indicating the length of time the account has existed, any participa-
tion in Secret Santa exchanges, Reddit Gold status, and other awards such
as “best comment” that the account may have received.6 Redditors can also
send private messages (PMs) to others, as well as “friend” them, which basi-
cally just highlights their username on link listings and in comment threads.7
(See Figure 1.4.)
While scholars have considered user participation and information sharing
on other, similar Web 2.0 (O’Reilly, 2005)/participatory culture platforms such
as Digg, delicious, and Metafilter (Lerman & Ghos, 2010; Marlow, Naaman,
Boyd, & Davis, 2006; Silva, Goel, & Mousavidin, 2009), little research
focuses specifically on the reddit community, despite its growing popularity.
As of July 2014, reddit was the 19th most visited site in the US and 54th
globally (“reddit.com,” 2014). Visitors to reddit spend about 13 minutes on
the site (“reddit.com,” 2014) and during June 2014, it had over 114,540,000
unique visitors from over 190 countries (“About reddit,” 2014). Additionally,
Figure 1.3. Cropped version of a comment page (captured November 5, 2014).
6 participatory culture, community, and play
mainstream media outlets have begun to acknowledge its importance as an
engaged—and, at times, problematic—community (Banks, 2013; Chen, 2012;
Kang, 2013; Zuckerman, 2013). Reddit’s political activism around attempts
to limit net neutrality and curtail internet freedoms in the US, as well as the
site’s involvement with the Boston Marathon Bombing investigation in 2013,
highlight its potential for enabling collective action, whether for good or for
ill. Frequent appearances by politicians, actors, writers, scientists, and public
intellectuals on the site’s /r/IAmA subreddit have also raised the profile of the
site. At the same time, its reputation as an “anything goes” space has led to
significant ethical and legal questions regarding content—from racist subred-
dits such as /r/GreatApes, to sexualized content featuring minors and upskirt
photos of women on the now-deceased /r/creepshots.
While interaction on reddit is necessarily social, it is not, strictly speaking,
a social networking site where connections are “publically articulated” (Ellison
& boyd, 2013). Facebook, Google+, and the like tend to rely on one’s online
identity connecting to one’s “offline” identity—or at least that is increasingly
becoming their conceit. And, unlike YouTube, Vimeo, or Soundcloud, reddit is
Figure 1.4. Cropped version of a profile page (captured November 5, 2014).
introduction 7
not organized around a particular media artifact type (such as videos or sound
clips). Nor does interaction revolve exclusively around niche discussions of
content (such as MetaFilter or Slashdot or discussion boards generally). Nor
is interaction managed and controlled by codified individuals or groups (such
as on blogs). And unlike its anonymous close cousin 4chan, reddit is a pseudo-
anonymous, persistent space, where individuals gain reputation and recogni-
tion over time. Reddit is therefore a unique, boundary-spanning platform that
elicits new questions about the nature of participatory culture and community
in the age of social networking.
Contemporary media cultures and
gatekeeping in Web 2.0+
It is impossible to discuss a site like reddit without first noting the ways in
which media cultures are changing in the 21st century. Henry Jenkins’s (2006)
idea of “participatory culture” suggests that our individual and collective
engagement with mass media fundamentally shifted during the early 1990s,
around the same time that the internet became more commonly available
in people’s workplaces and homes. However, it is important to acknowledge
the sort of active engagement we see today with popular media is not new—
fanzines, underground publications, and the like have been around since
the 1940s (and amateur press and radio involvement long before that)—but
the scale and pervasiveness of our ability to “talk back” to the media, and,
most important, be heard by media producers, experienced a rapid increase
concomitantly with the internet’s penetration into our everyday lives
(Jenkins, Ford, & Green, 2013). As audiences became fractured, niche, and
increasingly invested in the media products they “consumed,” the tools used
to create content became cheaper and more accessible to the average fan.
Thus, everyone potentially can become a “prosumer” of content (Jenkins,
2006). This shift—from a massified audience that was perceived as being
composed of relatively passive receptors in the media production chain to a
more active and engaged audience whose members produce media content
of their own—has been well documented (Andrejevic, 2008; Baym, 2000;
Delwiche & Henderson, 2013; Murray, 2004; Shefrin, 2004).
We increasingly view audiences as active participants who “work for the
text” (Milner, 2009) and are willing to labor freely for non-monetary gains
such as social connections with other fans and deeper engagement with the
texts themselves. And participatory culture platforms fundamentally depend
8 participatory culture, community, and play
on user-generated content. One would think this would result in a relatively
symmetrical relationship between platform owners and their audiences, as the
former is dependent on the latter’s continued engagement and willingness
to produce new content. Critics of the neoliberalism underpinnings of Web
2.0 (and its later iterations) have argued, however, that “free” labor can be
exploited labor (Kosnik, 2013; Ross, 2013; Scholz, 2008, 2013; Terranova,
2003). For example, platform owners extract value from users in the form of
data and metrics, creating in essence algorithmic “taste profiles.” These are
then sold to companies for marketing purposes, which are later used to create
targeted advertisements for users (van Dijck, 2013). Both Jaron Lanier (2010)
and Evgeny Morozov (2013) note the implicit irony of organizations harvest-
ing and essentially selling back the collective labor of the individuals without
which the platform would cease to exist (or at least cease to have much rele-
vance or market penetration).
In addition to changing the logics between producers and consumers, the
internet in general and sites like reddit specifically present a challenge to me-
dia gatekeeping. Traditionally, news organizations have relied on specialized
professionals (journalists and editors) to ensure content is ethically collected
and reported. In the mass media environment of the early to mid-20th century,
this meant that a small number of individuals (gatekeepers) were responsible
for determining what constituted “the news” (Bennett, 2004). It also meant
that news organizations frequently depended on elites for access, creating a
cycle whereby newsworthiness was partially determined by what elites wanted
the public to know. And what news organizations covered became part of the
national dialogue—that is, news coverage partially determined what the pub-
lic would talk about (McCombs & Shaw, 1972).
The development of Web 2.0 technologies altered this relationship be-
tween news organizations and the public. It encouraged a rise in citizen jour-
nalism, whereby non-professionals were able to participate in pursuing news
stories of interest, which resulted in a proliferation of “non-official” sources
(Gillmor, 2006). This meant that gatekeepers no longer solely controlled the
dialogue between the populace and the elites. In the mid-2000s, the growing
popularity of social networking platforms meant that citizens could reach out
directly to elites through these channels, reducing the need for—or at least
the appearance of a need for—intermediaries between the two groups. So the
populace had both more access to elites and additional channels of infor-
mation beyond the “mass media” of the previous century. Theoretically, this
would mean that the public would be better informed by a greater diversity of
introduction 9
news sources than ever before. Civic and political participation would natu-
rally rise as a result of these changes (Norris, 2001).
The reddit community’s desire to break down the barriers between ex-
pert and novice is evidenced in the large number of subreddits dedicated to
non-experts asking questions of scientists (/r/askscience) or historians (/r/
AskHistorians) and blurs the lines between public and private figure. The
community’s effective meme-spreading abilities have also catapulted private
individuals to internet and popular media glory. See, for example, Zeddie
Little, who gained fame on reddit as “Ridiculously Photogenic Guy” (Brad,
2012a). Likewise, popular posters on the site, such as biologist /u/Unidan and
his trademark “Biologist here” opening line, become micro-celebrities them-
selves (Marwick, 2013; Senft, 2013). And the site’s hugely popular default
subreddit /r/IAmA hosts conversations with celebrities, politicians, actors,
authors, and scientists and allows the average redditor to ask a question of
or have a short conversation with prominent cultural figures directly. The
implication is that since there are no intermediaries (or at least no overtly
visible ones), the conversation occurring is more democratic, more authen-
tic, and more deliberative.
In practice, however, the factor that attracts many redditors to the site—
the ability to create a feed based on individual interests, no matter how
niche—also contributes to the reality that it is easy to create an “echo cham-
ber” or “filter bubble” (Pariser, 2011). The sense that content on the site is
completely tailored to your interests and regularly refreshed makes it both an
intoxicating space and incredibly addicting. But it also means that it is easy
to create an experience wherein one’s views are merely confirmed rather than
challenged, likely the opposite of the democratic, deliberative nature of the
“potential” of the internet. Most redditors are aware of these twin tendencies.
As Dakota8 told me:
There’s a near-constant stream of new, interesting content … And once you curate
your subreddits to your liking, almost all of the content is directly appealing to you …
In addition to selecting your subreddits by content, you’re probably also sorting them
by conversation—it’s more than possible to only subscribe to subs [subreddits] such
that you converse almost exclusively with scientists, or Joss Whedon fans, or people
of your own language (if it’s not English). It’s really easy to create your own “bubble”
of people who think and speak like you do—they may challenge your ideas at times,
but they’re otherwise your “peers.” I think that’s an especially appealing/“addictive”
aspect, because, as an adult with[out] the social constructs of school, it can be chal-
lenging to create such communities IRL.
10 participatory culture, community, and play
As this individual articulates, redditors are aware of the reality of having a
limited experience of the site’s full content while still liking it for precisely
these reasons. The “bubble” that my informant mentions is one that many
redditors happily exist inside—even while threads decry the “echo chamber”
or “hivemind” nature of many of the site’s conversations. It is not unsur-
prising, then, that experimental research on sites with similar downvoting/
upvoting mechanics as reddit demonstrates that social influence plays a key
role in how postings are received (Muchnik, Aral, & Taylor, 2013, p. 650).
And yet redditors remain a news-consuming bunch: 62% of them get news
from the site (as compared with 52% for Twitter, 47% for Facebook, and 20%
for YouTube) (Holcomb, Gottfried, & Mitchell, 2013).
However, the notion that reddit is entirely without gatekeepers is untrue—
or at least the reality is more complicated. Moderators have a great deal of
power over the kind of content that appears in their subreddits. They can
set explicit rules regarding sources, tone, or content of submissions and com-
ments. Yes, anyone can create his/her own subreddit, but actually creating one
that gains subscribers and visibility is tricky. A second set of “gatekeepers” is
composed of those individuals who browse the new queue of any particular
subreddit and vote on the most recent submissions. The reddit ranking algo-
rithm weighs the earliest votes on a particular item or comment more heavily,
meaning that the first 10 votes are most influential in terms of whether other
redditors will ever see the submitted material (Salihefendic, 2010). This in-
formal, anonymous group is referred to fondly as the “Knights of the New” by
redditors. This term of endearment is applied because the task is seen as onerous
and mind numbing (a lot of spam and meaningless content clutter up the new
queue at any given moment) and because redditors recognize the importance
of preserving the quality of the site submissions. So these individuals also act as
kind of ad hoc gatekeepers as well. In fact, I suspect that many of the Knights
of the New are also moderators—as they would have both the inclination for
and interest in keeping content quality up while also spending a significant
amount of time on the site because of their moderation duties. The notion
that a select few individuals might control much of what becomes popular is
discussed regularly on the site—most notably in a /r/TheoryofReddit posting
in which some redditors decried the “power user” model they believed led to
the downfall of Digg.com. As the original poster (OP) wrote, “The trend in
the past year seems to be toward a centralization of power (and we all know
power has a rather unfortunate side-effect of corruption, especially on the Net),
reduction of mod accountability, and painting any criticism as ‘rabble rousing’
introduction 11
or ‘witch hunting’” (smooshie, 2012). Thus, reddit represents a complex space
in which the influence of elite users and gatekeepers may be reduced but is not
eliminated entirely.
A few notes on method
This research is shaped by the ethnographic approaches that other scholars
have used to understand communities enabled by the web and other new media
(Beaulieu, 2004; Boellstorff, Nardi, Pearce, & Taylor, 2012; Hine, 2008; Horst
& Miller, 2012; Markham & Baym, 2009). Ethnography (“writing culture”)
attempts to unpack the culture of a space and explore it from the perspective
of an insider (Clifford & Marcus, 1986). Using a methodological orientation
rather than simply a single method, ethnographers employ a number of ap-
proaches to understanding cultures, including participatory observation, inter-
views, text analysis, and historical research (Schensul & LeCompte, 2013), all
while taking copious, detailed field notes (Emerson, Fretz, & Shaw, 2011; Van
Maanen, 2011). Digital, online, or internet ethnography applies these meth-
ods online, as an attempt to understand how individuals, communities, and
cultures shape and are shaped by these spaces.
Qualitative researchers and in particular those inclined toward ethno-
graphic methods, emphasize the importance of reflexivity within the research
process. Annette Markham (2009), for example, argues that it is critical for
researchers to acknowledge their local subjectivities and encourages them to
reflect on the ways in which their interpretations are colored by cultural as-
sumptions. To that end, I offer a few notes about my involvement with reddit.
First of all, this community feels familiar. I worked for a number of years as an
HTML coder (when such a thing existed), user interface designer, usability
expert, information architect, and all-around “webmonkey.” My workplaces
were overwhelmingly young, nerdy, white, male dominated, and liberal. I
have also long been interested in elements of geek culture—as an avid video
gamer, lover of independent comics, and design nerd. Most important, I love
cats and reddit does too. Therefore, reddit seems like home to me, even if I
find myself frustrated by the lack of diversity and problematic discourse on a
site that rhetorically espouses the importance of free speech, informed opin-
ions, and egalitarianism.
As of August 2014, my primary account has been registered for only
three years, but I lurked for several years before that. This actually seems
to be a common pattern for reddit (and, possibly, most pseudoanonymous
12 participatory culture, community, and play
communities where the stakes of contributing versus lurking are relatively
high)—many posters make their first posts about the de-lurking process and
often attempt to inoculate themselves from criticism by posting the words
“first post; please be kind” or the equivalent. The process by which I de-
lurked was uneventful—I posted several pictures from my travels in Hong
Kong in 2011. More specifically, I submitted a blurry picture I took in a Hong
Kong mall of a Mona Lisa eating an ice cream cone which was entirely made
of miniature toasts. My first post did not hit the front page of the subreddit to
which it was submitted, nor did it go entirely unnoticed—I earned a paltry
25 karma for it. At the time, I was sure that the content would be of interest
to others on the site if I could only come up with a pithy headline to accom-
pany it—or if it had actually been taken with a real camera rather than my
terrible cell phone.
Since my first posting on reddit, I have upvoted and downvoted thousands
of posts and comments, commented on others’ submissions, conducted inter-
views with other reddit members and moderators about their experiences with
the site, and collected almost anything written about reddit—from official
historical documents that trace the founding of reddit to observations and
criticism written by journalists and bloggers. Some interviewees/informants
were recruited through a subreddit specifically dedicated to such requests (/r/
SampleSize), while others, such as the moderators of ShitRedditSays (SRS),
were contacted directly because of their unique perspective on the site. Inter-
views helped me fill in the gaps about how others came to reddit, how they
understood the space, what they found enjoyable about their experiences, and
what they wished was different about it.
I have also stayed quiet and simply watched interactions on the site un-
fold. My corpus includes copious screenshots, written field notes, and coded
interactions in an attempt to understand the particularities of reddit’s culture.
Much of this research is grounded in my observations of reddit’s generic front
page (/r/all) and the more popular subreddits. This is not to suggest that red-
dit’s collective identity is only shaped by the few subreddits whose postings
seem to dominate the front page. Instead, it is merely a convenient starting
point for grappling with the enormous quantity of original content that reddit
members create.
Reddit’s platform logics add a layer of complexity to this project. Post-
ers are encouraged to upvote content they find useful, interesting, or that
adds meaningfully to the conversation according to the site’s reddiquette.9
Both comments and postings are then moved to the top of the page based
introduction 13
on the number of upvotes minus the number of downvotes they receive.10 A
large amount of karma for a particular comment may indicate that individuals
reading it found it valuable or agreed with it or thought that it added use-
ful information to the conversation or thought that it was funny—in other
words, it is difficult to know what might be motivating an individual redditor’s
vote. In addition, comments that have received a large number of downvotes
are often hidden, depending on the threshold a user sets in the preferences
screen, meaning that a significant portion of the reddit audience may never
see them.11 In this project, therefore, comments and posts with a large amount
of karma were viewed with a bit of skepticism and not used as the sole mech-
anism for understanding reddit culture. As with other communities, popular
commenters and perspectives tend to emerge, creating a sort of power law
dynamic (Shirky, 2003) in which a significant portion of the content and
comments tends to be ignored in favor of those made by a few redditors
(karmarank, 2014). Still, it is important to note what content is favored by
the reddit community and what is not—even if the motivation behind a
particular up- or downvote is not known.
Ethnographers have long discussed the “loss of distance” that happens
when engaging with a community. My experience with reddit is no different.
On a daily basis, I see material that makes me think, makes me laugh, and
touches my heart. Many of these moments are ineffable and fleeting and un-
fortunately dismissed as meaningless for many “outsiders.” At the same time,
there are moments—too many to count—during which my jaw drops open,
I sigh heavily, and slam my laptop shut after reading yet another misogynistic,
ablest, racist, homophobic, ageist, transphobic posting or comment. Reddit
is regularly an infuriating and inspiring place. Doing ethnography is compli-
cated; cultures are messy, slippery, and complicated things that can rarely be
summed up in tidy packages. Ambiguity and qualifying statements seem to
be the norm in many ethnographies, and this one is no different. This eth-
nography of reddit is literally one story of potentially many that could be told
about this space. It is, however, a narrative grounded in many different forms
of data and is one that I feel confident will at least serve as a starting point for
creating a more nuanced understanding of how participatory culture platforms
are multifaceted places embodying democratic ideals while still marginalizing
certain voices.
Critics could question my attempt to characterize reddit as a culture rather
than simply an assemblage of many cultures. It is true that reddit is not a uni-
tary entity. It is a space that hosts a wide variety of subreddits, each of which
14 participatory culture, community, and play
has its own unique subcultures, norms, and rules. But it is also true that certain
patterns characterize interactions throughout the site. Some of these are a
function of the reddit voting system, while others reflect larger demographic
tendencies and attitudes of the reddit user base. So acknowledging that reddit
is composed of many different subcultures, some of which hold diametrically
conflicting perspectives, does not negate the importance of understanding
how larger cultural mores shape the space. I realize this approach is likely to
be met with some resistance by some within the reddit community. Redditors
often push back against the argument that reddit has “a culture,” instead sug-
gesting that it reflects many different cultures while at the same time decrying
reddit’s “hivemind.” However, this does not reflect my own experience or that
of at least some others within the community. For example, one individual
on /r/circlebroke (a subreddit dedicated to meta-conversations about reddit
with a social justice perspective) argued that even if redditors are not willing
to acknowledge publically their own cultural baggage, it is reflected in their
voting behavior:12
Usually what will happen is someone will criticize Reddit as a whole for one of it’s
many screwed up views, and no matter what, every single fucking time, some jerk-off
will smugly respond with something along the lines of:
It’s almost as if Reddit is made up of millions of people who all have different opinions.
(+10,000,000 upvotes)
Every time I see this comment I want [to] punch a hole through my monitor. Do these
people not understand that when these circlejerk comments (eugenics, fat sham-
ing, slut shaming, racism, etc) constantly get upvoted by thousands of people that
it’s probably the general opinion held by the majority of the community? (Frank_
Reynolds_19, 2014)
This is one of those both/and situations: reddit is both one and many cul-
tures, but getting a handle on the latter requires a good understanding
of the former. And, to alleviate the concern that I am painting this space
with too broad a brush, my goal with this book is to highlight rather than
resolve the contradictions that I see expressed on reddit and how these
reflect larger tensions within mediated participatory culture more broadly.
My hope is that this book begins a conversation—about the politics of par-
ticipatory culture platforms, about reddit, and about the need to engage
with documenting and understanding contemporaneous studies of online
spaces before they disappear.
introduction 15
Overview of this book
This book is organized into themes that highlight the complex and often
contradictory nature of reddit. The diversity of subreddits dedicated to niche
interests would suggest that nothing really binds this community together;
however, it is the unspoken politics of the reddit platform (Gillespie, 2010)
that encourages particular interactional patterns across the space. These in-
teractional patterns highlight larger contradictions within the community
and serve to deepen our assumptions about the nature of participatory cul-
ture. These contradictions include the tendency for the community to be
intensely altruistic and cynical with regard to institutions, communities,
individuals, and themselves; the tension between new members and long-
time “redditors”; the way the community and the platform itself encourages
a playful approach to discourse and how this is also contested; and how red-
dit members and designers espouse a technologically open but discursively
closed approach to the community. Each of these tensions/contradictions is
explored in its own chapter.
In Chapter 2, I highlight the multifaceted nature of reddit and explain
some of the bodies of literature that inform how I approached thinking about
reddit culture. This chapter introduces a number of ways to think about the
space—as a kind of carnival, a performance, play, community, and as a plat-
form. I also explore how reddit is related to and different from other participa-
tory culture platforms (Twitter, 4chan, YouTube, etc.).
Chapter 3 explores the ways in which redditors relate to themselves and
the community both inside and outside of reddit. I describe a number of ways
in which the community expresses both altruistic and cynical tendencies.
Altruism is evidenced through the numerous social support subreddits, offers
of material goods through gift exchanges, and individual gifts of Reddit Gold
and cryptocurrency. In addition, the community often rallies around import-
ant causes, especially those of interest to its tech-savvy members. As on other
online platforms, however, redditors can exhibit a kind of mob mentality—
which is evidenced by its involvement in singular events (such as the Boston
Marathon Bombing) and also colors much of the discourse on particular
subreddits (such as those dedicated to “cringeworthy” postings). I end with a
description of the multiple and contradictory ways that redditors think about
themselves and their community.
In Chapter 4, I examine the way novice reddit members become “reddi-
tors” and how this changes their relationship with the community as a whole.
16 participatory culture, community, and play
I also explore the conflicted relationship the reddit community members
have with their own history. I focus on the ways in which subreddits tend
to drift over time, as well as redditors’ obsession with reposting material and
their belief that an influx of new users contributes to the decline in content
and discourse on the site. In addition, this chapter illustrates how the default
subreddits, although the most visible to site visitors, are viewed with scorn
by many. It also details the ways that reddiquette—an informal statement of
community rules—is both useful and disregarded regularly by the community.
I end with a discussion of meta-subreddits—the spaces where reddit discusses
reddit—and why the reddit platform and community may encourage these
kinds of conversations.
Chapter 5 borrows work from game and play studies to examine the ways
in which redditors engage in various forms of play as a primary mode of ex-
pression. From memes to novelty accounts to reaction GIFs, I explain how
these forms are uniquely enabled by the reddit platform. I also explore how
redditors are motivated by karma, how it is publically derided but still holds
importance for many individuals. I explain how accusations of “shitposting”
and “karmawhoring” suggest that the community values meaningful contribu-
tions over that which might be merely popular or repetitive. This chapter also
explores the ways the community defines the “rules” of reddit and how they
may be inverted. I briefly explain how this kind of inversion of play is different
from trolling as a practice.
In Chapter 6, I detail the problematic ways in which reddit discourse mar-
ginalizes many voices. Focusing specifically on the ways in which redditors
create a kind of “male gaze,” I examine how geek masculinity discursively
excludes women and people of color—despite their longtime presence in the
community. I explore the image of women on reddit in multiple ways—from
the NSFW (not safe for work) subreddits to men’s rights activism, through
memes shared on /r/AdviceAnimals and elsewhere, which often feature a mi-
sogynistic and retrograde vision of women. This chapter profiles a specific
reddit community—ShitRedditSays (SRS)—that engages in a kind of coun-
terplay in an effort to raise awareness about the problematic and offensive dis-
course that populates much of reddit. SRS’s role as “redditors” is a contested
one, and this brings larger questions about the nature of insiders and outsiders
in participatory culture to the foreground.
Chapter 7 offers a summary of findings and connects them to a broader
discussion of platform politics and participatory culture. It also explores
how reddit might develop in the future and offers a brief examination of
introduction 17
how pseudoanonymity shapes the site’s discourse. I conclude with a discus-
sion of future directions that research into reddit might take.
Notes
1. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zi8VTeDHjcM
2. From the MacArthur Foundation’s Confronting the Challenges of Participatory Culture:
Media Education for the 21st Century: “A participatory culture is a culture with relatively
low barriers to artistic expression and civic engagement, strong support for creating and
sharing one’s creations, and some type of informal mentorship whereby what is known
by the most experienced is passed along to novices. A participatory culture is also one in
which members believe their contributions matter, and feel some degree of social connec-
tion with one another (at the least they care what other people think about what they
have created)” (Jenkins et al., 2009, p. 3).
3. For the purposes of readability, I have shortened the URLs for the subreddits I mentioned
in this text to “/r/nameofsubreddit.” Likewise, usernames have been shortened to “/u/
nameofuser.” Reddit (and redditors) appears lowercase, except when referred to differently
by interviewees and press pieces about the site. Subreddit names preserve the capitaliza-
tion from the site’s subreddit list at http://www.reddit.com/subreddits/. And, as a matter of
practicality, my work on reddit focused exclusively on the site’s public subreddits.
4. The defaults ballooned in May 2014, going from 25 to 50. This list includes /r/announce-
ments, /r/Art, /r/AskReddit, /r/askscience, /r/aww, /r/blog, /r/books, /r/creepy, /r/datais-
beautiful, /r/DIY, /r/Documentaries, /r/EarthPorn, /r/explainlikeimfive, /r/Fitness, /r/food,
/r/funny, /r/Futurology, /r/gadgets, /r/gaming, /r/GetMotivated, /r/gifs, /r/history, /r/IAmA,
/r/InternetIsBeautiful, /r/Jokes, /r/LifeProTips, /r/listentothis, /r/mildlyinteresting, /r/mov-
ies, /r/Music, /r/news, /r/nosleep, /r/nottheonion, /r/oldschoolcool, /r/personalfinance, /r/
philosophy, /r/photoshopbattles, /r/pics, /r/science, /r/Showerthoughts, /r/space, /r/sports,
/r/television, /r/tifu, /r/todayilearned, /r/TwoXChromosomes, /r/UpliftingNews, /r/videos,
/r/worldnews, /r/writingprompts (Hern, 2014).
5. Reddit uses a modified version of Markdown syntax: http://daringfireball.net/projects/
markdown/syntax.
6. A list of trophies is located at http://www.reddit.com/wiki/awards.
7. A complete guide describing the basics of reddit can be found at http://www.reddit.com/
wiki/reddit_101.
8. All informants/interviewees were known to me only by their reddit username. I have as-
signed gender-neutral pseudonyms for each interviewee. These were generated randomly
from http://www.babynames1000.com/gender-neutral/.
9. Reddiquette is a community-authored statement of general “rules” for reddit behavior,
which I discuss more in depth in Chapter 4.
10. The algorithm for showing the totals of upvotes and downvotes (karma) is slightly more
complicated than this. Reddit code “fuzzes” the points of a posting to account for spam and
does not show the score of newly posted items for the first few hours to avoid a “bandwagon”
effect (cupcake1713, 2014a). In June 2014, reddit administrators also made a significant
18 participatory culture, community, and play
change to the way in which votes were displayed on the site. Instead of showing the indi-
vidual total number of upvotes and downvotes, the platform would now display a percent-
age (initially, Reddit Enhancement Suite users saw a ?|? in which the vote totals had been
shown previously—later this was removed entirely). Administrators argued that since the
vote totals were already inaccurate, having been fuzzed to avoid providing feedback to spam
bots regarding their effectiveness, it was more of a “tweak” than a major change (Deimorz,
2014b). But it proved highly controversial, with many redditors arguing that a link or com-
ment with a score of –1 based on 299 upvotes and 300 downvotes was substantially differ-
ent from one that had a –1 based on only 2 upvotes and 3 downvotes. The fieldwork and
findings reported in this book do not reflect this change regarding how karma is reported to
reddit users.
11. Comments on a particular posting can be sorted a number of ways through a drop-down
menu on each posting’s page. Each of these sorting functions changes the visibility of com-
ments. The default sort function is “best” (which sorts the comments based on the num-
ber of upvotes and downvotes, taking into account sample size) (Munroe, 2009). Several
other sorting options exist: “top” (this makes comments with the most upvotes, regardless
of downvotes, the most visible/highest on the page), “new” (this moves the newest com-
ments to the top of the page), “hot” (this is a combination of the “top” and “new” func-
tion, giving some priority to comments that are most recently made), “controversial” (this
moves comments with a large number of upvotes and downvotes to the top of the page),
and “old” (this moves the oldest comments to the top of the page) (djloreddit, 2014).
12. Quotations from informants and public postings retain their original grammar, capitaliza-
tion, and usage, and have only been edited for clarity where necessary.
